


let the mourners through

by shatterthelight



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 09:01:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12105285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: Rose has killed countless people, and the first one was herself.





	let the mourners through

Rose has killed countless people, and the first one was herself.

Clara Ruvelle's blood is stained beneath her fingernails, and she has never missed the ghost of her. Every life between Clara and Rose has been a character that she clawed out of her brain, nameless skin draped over hollow bones. Every life has been a weapon, every kiss a gunshot. Dead woman walking, Rose is, nothing but a knife and ambition, and she's never once looked back at the trail of destruction that follows at her heels.

Then Luisa Alver wakes her up.

Rose has done this before, found solace in the beds of women for hours at a time, long enough to leave her body when it grows too heavy for her soul to hold. She's dragged her fingers over sweat-slicked skin, pressed curves against curves, has fucked herself out of the grave until the morning sun comes through the window to kill her again. But she's always walked away after that, has never, before now, let the same woman revive her twice.

Her body is stiff when she gives it to Emilio, though it seems he can never that tell he's making love with the corpse of someone who never really lived at all. And there is safety in this, in breathing against splintered ribs while his hips ride hers, in burying herself in this trophy wife woman and letting the crows peck at her rotting flesh.

She doesn't mean to go back to Luisa, but it happens, time and time again, and when she grips the sheets and cries out while Luisa bends over her and seems, impossibly, to stare straight through death, Rose falls in love with existing.

It's a realization that comes in pieces. Running her hand through her red, red hair and thinking of how much she likes the color. Luisa moaning, “ _Rose, Rose, oh, god, Rose,_ ” and Rose loving the way the name sounds in her mouth. Waking up in her arms the next day and wanting to stay alive.

Her husband goes out of town on a business trip and she sits alone in the dark, runs her hand over the silk sheets on her bed and imagines what it'd be like to fall into Luisa every single night. She stalks into the bathroom and slips her nightgown off over her head, turns on the light, hugs her arms around Rose Solano's frame and finds that the whole of her fits far too well inside of it.

She's always seen a burial ground in her exposed form, but now, staring into the mirror, she sees pale skin and scars and all the places Luisa's hands have touched. She wants to tear away all the parts of her that Luisa has given life to, but nothing would be left if she did, because her blood runs warm through every inch of her veins.

Luisa is fond of asking questions that beg to pull more reality out of her than she has ever been willing to give, but now, watching the rise and fall of her chest, she finds herself answering them. White, her favorite color is white, cold and clean as the snow. She loves the smell of lavender and smoke and wine, loves the taste of red velvet, loves the sound of rain against a window and Luisa's laughter when it comes unbidden. And these things, the things she never lets herself have, all come to her effortlessly, if only she closes her eyes and pictures Luisa while she thinks of them.

Clara Ruvelle's blood is stained beneath her fingernails, but the ghost of her floats somewhere within her body, and she opens her eyes and is terrified to find she wants to be Rose Solano so much more than she wants to kill her. 

It's hard to leave herself when Emilio touches her after that. Her skin crawls in a way it never used to, and when she flinches so hard she has to flee, she always runs in the same direction.

No matter how many times Rose abandons her and insists she'll never return, Luisa follows wherever she beckons, lighting up another corner of her on the nights they hide away. Rose tries to snuff those lights out the next day, but they just keep shining through, flushing her cheeks, burning her lungs.

Luisa chases her when she leaves, Luisa takes her hand and whispers _stay with me,_ Luisaloves too deeply and cries too freely to ever have been dead a day in her life, and Rose will kill her if she stays.

Luisa kisses her, and Rose is breathing. Luisa holds her like she's worth something, and Rose is real.

 _I want to give you this._ Luisa is made of bright smiles and broken edges. _I want to be this._  She is going to hurt this aching soul. She is going to break this fragile heart.

Rose is real, but the blood is still there.

She scrubs at it with hot water and something that tastes too much like regret, but it doesn't go away, and a dark, ugly part of her doesn't want it to. _I am going to break you._  Tears prick her eyes. Her fingers curl and flex. _I am going to break you._  

Rose has killed countless people, and Luisa is going to be next.

Luisa stares into her eyes – Clara's blue, Rose's blue – and parts her lips, but no words come out.

 _See me._ Rose, pinned flat on her back underneath her, silently begs it. _See me._

And she doesn't know if she wants Luisa to love the monster or run from it, only that she desperately wants her to see the teeth and hear the howl and know that she's sleeping at danger's side.

 _I need you to kill me,_ Rose brushes a finger against her cheek, and Luisa holds her breath, _before I kill you first._  

Her favorite movie is _Breakfast at Tiffany's._ Her favorite song is"Ave Maria." She loves orchids and Miami summers and the smell of freshly blown-out candles. She loves powdered sugar and midnight kisses and searching for constellations in the black curtain of the sky. She loves sex. She loves bullet wounds. She loves the sound of her own heartbeat.

Luisa lowers her head between her thighs, and Rose Solano arches her back, alive.


End file.
